I had friends who were going to get rich selling Amway. When they approached me, I told them that I would not go into business with friends, but I would be more than happy to look over Amway's catalog and see if I could use any of the products Amway sells. They did not take me up on my offer. I guess they figured all of their Amway money would come from the people below them. But someone has to sell the stuff, don't they?

Sophia, that was a truly appalling way to be treated. I'm glad your mom and dad got a nice meal, though!

MLM schemes seem to become very "cult-like". We had a woman in our office get into H********. She started spending most of her time on the phone with her own customers, rather than ours (she had her own office, so fortunately for her the bosses didn't notice this at first). She started selling products to several of the other women in the company, who liked the product, but got very annoyed when they wouldn't agree to become distributors under her, so she stopped allowing them to buy from her (a little counterproductive, to my mind). She kept telling us about how the product would do wonders for health - "It even cures AIDS!" I asked her why it wasn't widely known, and she explained how the evil medical community had quashed this news for their own profit.

Finally, she decided to quit, because the organization had apparently brainwashed her into believing that she would make her first million in one year (also, she was convinced our management had treated her very badly - OK, they're not philanthropists with their staff, but most of her complaints were ridiculous). I had to watch her on her last day because of vague threats of her destroying her work records before she left.

As she left, she promised to come by in six months, to show us her new Cadillac. That was 8 years ago, and we're still waiting.

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My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

I had friends who were going to get rich selling Amway. When they approached me, I told them that I would not go into business with friends, but I would be more than happy to look over Amway's catalog and see if I could use any of the products Amway sells. They did not take me up on my offer. I guess they figured all of their Amway money would come from the people below them. But someone has to sell the stuff, don't they?

Lorir, that's what puzzles me. Even a pyramid scheme needs some sort of suppport at the bottom. Apparently even the distributors agree you can't make a profit just by selling the stuff.

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My cousin's memoir of love and loneliness while raising a child with multiple disabilities will be out on Amazon soon! Know the Night, by Maria Mutch, has been called "full of hope, light, and companionship for surviving the small hours of the night."

kathrynne

Lorir, that's what puzzles me. Even a pyramid scheme needs some sort of suppport at the bottom. Apparently even the distributors agree you can't make a profit just by selling the stuff.

This got much longer than I intended. Sorry.

Here's how my brother pitched the Quixtar to me, quick and dirty (we were on the phone, so he couldn't come close to a full sales talk):

We'll get lots of people in my "downline" and everyone just buys what they would normally buy, only from the website instead of a brick and mortar store. As long as you spend the minimum to get a check each month, you get some credit for everything spent in your downline. And your downline's downline. And so on.

One huge problem for me is that DH and I are a two-person household and the everyday stuff available on the website is horribly overpriced, so we can't possibly spend our "minimum" there even once every three months. Even that is assuming we're buying the low-carb cookies and energy drinks (which I admit are very good, and the only reason I stayed in for another year), which is really expensive stuff,

In order to generate a check, I have to spend about $150 in a month on the site. The largest check I've seen was for $12. I'm in this only to have access to products I couldn't otherwise buy.

My sister, otoh, does not have web access, but suddenly has excellent reason to get online ASAP. Bill also talked her into Quixtar and because she doesn't have web access he's been ordering things for her. Each month he places an order on her credit card for enough product to generate a check for her. She wants to get online and control her own orders before the stockpile grows any larger.

She told me this week that her mudroom is filling rapidly, mostly with cases of energy drink because that generates the best "spiff." Granted she could use a can or two of this herself every day to help chase after the two kids, but she sure isn't letting the kids drink it or she'd need rocket fuel to keep up.

I'm just glad I don't live near Bill, so he's not trying to drag me along to every "rah-rah" session, like he is my sister (who can't spare the time). He suggests I go to the meetings in my state, but apparently doesn't understand that a two-hour trip each way for a two-hour meeting on a weeknight is not happening. Actually, if the meetings were held in my own livingroom I wouldn't attend.

He has so many people signed up under him he may actually make some money. If, however, he makes enough to actually impact his finances he may well alienate his sisters and friends in the process.

I've told him I'm signed up and it ends there. No more talk, no pressure to attend meetings, and don't push me to try selling this to every person I meet on the street. I like a few products and will buy them when I need them, but if any more pressure is applied I will not renew.

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beckygoesape

My husband and I, while we were in college, invited some friends over for dinner. We were in an italian cooking mood. I made a huge meal, baked fresh breads, lasagna, alfredo. It was very over the top simply because we got some sort of windfall and we could.

After the meal we wanted to show a video that we thought they'd like, since we all knew each other from being in theatre. My husband introduces this with, "And now we'd like to show you something!"

Our guests turned three shades of white. One mumbled to his wife, "If this is Amway we gotta go!" My husband and I looked at each other confused. Then it hit us. Amway salesmen had been running rampant in our little college community. When we said that it was just a movie we all had a good laugh.

FUNKIEFAIRY

LOL Hubby just reminded me of our once sitting in a coffee shop in the bay area, there were about 20-40 people in this place, which did poetry readings and other such things.

A small group of people with acoustic guitars and things took the stage, and we were waiting for something like maybe bluegrass or celtic music, The man leans into the mic, looks all around the room, and says 'The REAL reason we're all here tonight is to learn about the wonderful world of Amway'

For a second you could have heard a pin drop, then the whole room cracked up. Thank goodness he was joking, after reading some of these stories, it might have been true lol.

Hugs, Fabby

LOL!!! I choked on my sandwich laughing at this! While trying to pay for school, I was working as a waitress at the local pizza place. Every week, a group of well-dressed people would come in for a business type meeting and they would occasionally try to get us to stay in and listen to what they had to say, but we always declined. One night, we were completely dead except for this group, so as they were comming in, one of them stopped to chat at the counter with me. At first it was polite and the typical "nice weather we're having." kind of chat between strangers, but then it quickly became a sales pitch and wanting me to "make loads of money" doing almost nothing. I smiled politely and said "No thanks! I like doing something." and walked away. From that moment on, I became their number one target, they would leave their tips folded around business cards and pamplets under plates. I was glad to quit that job!

Ack Quixtar! Here is my horror story:When my best friend got married she hired a lady to do our make-up. We were supposed to meet at this lady's house and have a trial run before the wedding - ok cool free makover.. or so we thought. The lady sold Quixtar and after the makeover told us if we didn't setup an account my friend would have to pay an outrageous amount for us to have our make-up done for the wedding. Now we were all struggling college students and couldn't really afford this stuff, but were basically forced into it, if I had more backbone back then I would have stood up and left, and told them I'd do my own freaking makeup for the wedding.

unfortunately I did not have any backbone, I get my account setup and she wants me to make it so that things are automatically debited from my bank account each month. I told her I'd do that later and wouldn't let her do it at the party ( I had no intentions of doing this as I couldn't possibly use up or afford skin care things on a monthly basis). At some point before the month was up I got curious about the account and checked it...thank goodness I did - the woman had gone into my account and set it up to debit behind my back! Had I not checked it the thing would have emptied my bank account. I was sooooo mad. The account was cancelled immediately.

She did my makeup for the wedding and I looked like a clown...should have done it myself to begin with. I hope my friend didn't have to pay a ton for it but I never asked.

We had an Amway guy at work. His name was Bill. Bill talked constantly about how he was building the "business," and was constantly sprinkling his conversation with the jargon he was brainwashed into using.

Bill sometimes replaced things in our workroom- the most memorable things being wastebaskets. Colleague A and I were happy with our wastebaskets, and came in one morning to find them gone. In place of our old ones were new ones that did not fit under our worktables, and therefore took up more floor space. I went into the back room, took our old baskets out of the trash, put them back in our room, took the new Scamway ones out of the room, and stacked them out back, where Bill could do what ever he wanted with them. Bill swapped them out a second time, I swapped them back, and told him to leave us alone. He got quite angry as he was "only trying to help." This was his excuse every time I told him to stop pitching "the business" to me.

Bill continued spending hundreds of dollars a month to get a check for $10 or so. He bought junk food, (though he complained about being overweight), a water-purification system (couple thousand dollars, and the city water really is fine). He was spending so much money trying to get rich, that when he went on vacation and needed money, he credited himself $500 from the store we worked for the night before he left. You know those commercials in which the credit card companies say they'll call you if they suspect fraudulent activity on your account? CC companies call vendors too, and say, "Some one from your staff issued a credit to a customer who hasn't purchased much from you lately."

Amazingly, Bill wasn't fired for that. I guess Boss decided his best shot at getting the money back was to keep Bill employed and dock his pay. After Bill selling Scamway clothing at work, when he was supposed to be selling ours, and finally "forgetting" to take deposits to the bank, Bill was fired.

Bill and his wife moved west to Arizona and spent the next year mooching off her daughters and their significant others. We haven't heard from them since. Oh, wait, Bill did call and ask the Boss for a letter of reference, and Boss's only comment was, "He's lucky I didn't have his arrested."

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Fabrashamx

Wow, when I sent this story to Jeannie, I had NO idea that so many people had had this happen to them too. I am blown away that it was business as usual for them to lie to people to get them in, and I almost feel sorry for the people who were so foolish as to lose their shirts from these wackos.

The people I met reminded me of tele-evangelists, that Jim and Tammy Bakker special kind of crazy lol. I was glad to see in wikpedia that William Gouldd (He added the extra d, for dollars, of course ) Is no longer allowed to do business in this country.

Not sure of the fate of Amway, though, anyone know? Is it still around?loved the person who said their Amway guy had a 'Bob of his own' LOL and the crazy guy with his wastebaskets and free vacation cash, sheesh he is so lucky not to be in jail.

~~Fabby )

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LJM

Speaking of getting dragged to high-pressure cult-like groups under false pretenses-- has anyone here ever been to a sales-pitch meeting for the Landmark Forum? I had no idea what I was walking into the middle of -- I had been given to believe it was something like a rotary club meeting -- and the whole time I was there, I felt like I was in a sit-com parody of a weird, cultish "self-help" group that was heavy on "cult" and light on "self" or "help".

I declined to purchase one of their expensive day-long, self-help seminars, nor did I sign up for one of their weekend retreats. The only reason I didn't leave very quickly after I arrived was because I was dependent on the people who brought me for my ride, and they were off in another room someplace.

Those of us who had been dragged here as "first timers" --note the sales technique of making it sound like we've already joined-- were spit up into groups of six to eight, each of whom went into a different room where two members of the forum were to give a "presentation" to tell us what the forum was all about.

The incredibly-high-pressure sales-people / recruiters / whatever they were said that since they weren't being paid and were doing the "informational meeting" on volunteer basis (because the program had "helped them so much"), we should trust them, because they clearly weren't just trying to make money. They used a lot of cult-recruitment type methods to try to get us to join. It's the only time I've ever been in a conversation with people who gave me the impression of having been brainwashed. And everyone there (except the other "first-timers") was just a little bit "off" in a way that it was hard to put my finger on.

LJM

Landmark has been linked to cult activity and to the Church of Scientology.

I tried to get them off my back at the event by making it clear (truthfully) that I was living paycheck to paycheck at the time, and could not afford their seminars in any way, shape, or form. So they just tried to convince me that going into debt to pay for the seminar would be a wise investment! Um, no-- even if I weren't repulsed by the cult-like atmosphere, I was raised with more financial sense than that.

Any objection anyone had, they came back with a practiced script for why that was all the more reason they should come to one of the retreats. The scary thing was, they seemed to believe every word of nonsense they were spewing. They were far worse than any pushy salesperson, or any obnoxious proselytizer, that I have encountered before or since.

(Yes, even worse than the salesperson who has gone down in family folklore for the five hours (!!!) he spent in our house attempting to hard-sell my Mom a kirby vacume cleaner one sunny summer day when I was six. When he came back the next day with a more senior sales person in tow, she told them she wasn't interested without taking the chain off the door!)

OK, sorry for the hijack. We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming.

A good friend of mine has some horror stories from the month or two that she was involved with AMWAY, but those are hers to tell. She got out pretty darn quick.